This I Believe

Strange coincidences had never really occurred in my life until recently. Don’t get me wrong, I have ran into quite a few odd circumstances throughout my life, but nothing too obscure. They were generally along the lines of having a detailed dream, and ironically having the exact same dream replayed in my life the next day. Many people find coincidences to be pure accident. I believe that coincidences are real, and they happen for a reason.

Two years ago my sisters’ best friend died. She’d lived across the street from us for ten years, and I considered her a sister, and best friend, just as my parents, metaphorically, adopted her as their own daughter. She and my sister were inseparable, and the words to describe her death are unfathomable.

After her funeral, a close friend of my sister was driving the two of us home. The silence was unbearable so my sister turned on the radio probably to try to escape the reality of the situation through the melody of a song. Rather than the song be appealing to our senses, it made us mentally disheveled because this particular song reminded us too much of our friend.

Without second guessing it, the three of us jumped out of our seats reaching desperately to change the station. After it was changed, and our hearts had stopped pounding at an unusually fast pace, we returned calmly to our seats without a word. We didn’t even have to exchange our thoughts before hand, or discuss the matter after it had happened. It was surreal.

My sister is a senior in high school this year and on the fourth of April, she went to go visit a University in California; The fourth was also our best friends birthday. On our way home from the airport, my mom and I were debating whether or not to go to the cemetery without my sister. We were both lost in thought after our discussion, and to end the misplaced silence, I turned on the radio. There it was again; the same melody from the drive home following the funeral seeped through the speakers. I was in shock. My first instinct was to change the station, but for some reason I waited for a few seconds allowing the softy spoken lyrics to drift through the vehicle. In the same second that I changed the station, I asked my mom to drive towards the cemetery.

Although my sister wasn’t there to accompany my mother and I on the birthday visit, I felt as though this particular coincidence had been reason enough to go to the cemetery without her. Some people would argue that the song playing on the radio both days was just something that happened because the listeners happened to request the song on those days. But I choose not to analyze it any further than it needs to be, I choose to believe in coincidences.

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This week’s essay

Growing up in the former Yugoslavia, lawyer Djenita Pasic enjoyed the peace of her religiously diverse country. But after the fall of communism and the outbreak of the Bosnian War, Pasic was forced to reevaluate her ideas about religion and tolerance. Click here to read her essay.